TrumpBrand - America For Sale

The tweeted idiocies, outright lies, and deceptions gurgling up out of the TrumpBrand Government might appear entertaining, but the real, daily, and constant work to dismantle America is growing by leaps and bounds. Six months into this wrecking ball approach to government and the damage is already immeasurable. What a horrifying mess the TrumpBrand Government is making.

The Big Lie (aka the Blame Them Game)  which many Republicans and most Conservatives cling to, demands all problems or issues are merely the fault of any and every one except themselves - the reason those who hold office can't affect change is you, bucko, you and your crowd are bad hombres. It's the media, it's the previous administration, it's students, it's China, It's Germany (but it's isn't Russia), it's the immigrants, it's refugees, it's lazy poor people who make the problems that won't go away.

Oh and it is also the governed and those who govern. They - they - they - it's a mantra of blame throwing.

Meanwhile the real work to transform and elevate the control of business over government and the governed is on a stampede, noted in this report from Washington Monthly:

"The Trump/GOP effort to shrink the civil service plays on a narrative the American people have been hearing for decades: the federal workforce is bloated. As Mulvaney’s guidance put it, there are “too many Federal employees stuck in a system that is not working for the American people.” Press secretary Sean Spicer, announcing Trump’s executive order in January, explained that the hiring freeze “counters the dramatic expansion of the federal workforce in recent years.”

"The only problem with this narrative is that it is the exact opposite of the truth. As a share of the U.S. workforce, the federal civil service is actually smaller than at any time since before World War II. In absolute terms, it has been about the same size for half a century. In 1966, there were about 2.1 million executive branch civil servants (not including Postal Service employees). Since then, the country’s population has increased from 196 million to 323 million. The annual gross domestic product, along with annual government spending, more than quadrupled. And the workforce? In 2016, there were still only 2.1 million federal employees.

"There’s no rule that says the number of civil servants has to rise in lockstep with the population or the economy. Many federal jobs in the 1960s were clerical positions that computers have made obsolete. But still. In 1966, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Department of Homeland Security, no Federal Emergency Management Agency. Medicare and Medicaid had been signed into law just a year earlier. It’s hard to believe that the same number of people we had in 1966 can run such a radically larger government enterprise.

"And, in fact, they don’t.

"While the number of federal employees has basically flatlined for a half century, the government has ballooned if you include another group in your tally: private contractors. As the size and scope of federal programs grew, but the number of civil servants stayed fixed, that labor had to get done by someone. Congress’s answer has increasingly been to contract with the private sector. So when Trump and the Republicans say they’re going to shrink government by cutting federal workers, do a mental autocorrect. What they’re really saying is, we’re going to be shoveling a lot more money out the door to federal contractors."

For the record, anyone who says government should run like a business does not know what government is actually for or what it does. 

" ... there are between 600,000 and 800,000 service contractors; the government spends more on them than it does on the salaries of the entire civil service, which has three times the number of people. Contracting accounted for 40 percent of all discretionary spending in 2015, and service contracts accounted for 60 percent of that (even more at nondefense agencies). And it’s rising. Even the Defense Department spends twice as much on contracts for services as it spends on aircraft, ships, and land vehicles. According to a 2015 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, spending on contractors nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012, and the subset “that grew the most in dollar terms was contracts for professional, administrative, and management services”—that is, service contracts."

Dangerous Interest at Boring 2012 Conference

The annual Boring conference was of little interest, but even that might negate it's purpose:

"I regretfully agreed that all this did sound extremely boring and proceeded to the large neo-Georgian auditorium, where an audience of about 500 mostly twenty- and thirty-somethings were listening with careful amusement as a dapper young man talked about toast. There was a large screen behind him on the stage, and he was clicking through a series of photographs of toast slices, ranging from the entirely burnt to the effectively untoasted, in order to demonstrate what he called “the confusing, non-regulated series of toaster settings on the market.”

Valentine's Day Sewage Plant Tours

All the romance offered by a sewage treatment plant can be yours!

"Brooklyn, New York’s Newtown Creek sewage plant will be the center of romance this Valentine’s Day. Plant superintendent Jim Pynn will take loving couples and others on morning or afternoon tours of the facility this coming Tuesday, Feb. 14.

“New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection is bringing two things together,” Pynn told Govpro.com. “We are going to give tour attendees a lot of information on our infrastructure, and we will give them an opportunity to express their love for each other—pretty neat, huh?”

Yeah. Neato.

"One impressive part of the plant is its eight futuristic, stainless steel-clad digester eggs. Processing as much as 1.5 million gallons of sludge every day, and working like a digestion system, the eggs break down the aromatic waste into non-toxic sludge and gas. 

“Just imagine going home and saying, ‘Where did he take me on Valentine’s Day? I went to see the digester eggs in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.’”

Yes, just imagine.

Tennessee, Others Say Goodbye to Rest Stops

Via the Wall Street Journal:

"Later this month, cash-strapped Virginia plans to barricade entrances and switch off the plumbing and electricity at nearly half its highway rest areas. Other states also are lowering budgetary axes on the public pit stops that have lined the interstate highway system since its creation in 1956.

"But rest stops aren't going quietly.

"Truckers, blind merchants and a dogged historian are fighting to preserve them. If the battle is lost, every long-distance motorist will need "a strong rear end and a strong bladder" to hit the road, warns John Townsend, an official with the American Automobile Association in Washington.

There are about 2,500 rest areas along the interstates. State governments build and maintain them. Most have remained steadfastly utilitarian: a parking lot, a simple building with toilets, a few picnic benches, and maybe some vending machines. Because many of the interstates bypassed cities and towns, travelers often had no other options when they needed to pull off the road.

But over the years, big clusters of gas stations, fast-food outlets and motels have sprung up just off interstate exits in all but the most remote parts of the country. A national directory lists nearly 2,500 privately owned truck stops, each with at least 10 parking spaces and two showers. Even Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- which permits overnight stays by recreational vehicles at most of its more than 4,000 locations -- offers a popular alternative to old-fashioned rest areas.

A growing number of states have come to see rest areas as obsolete. Rather than spend the money on maintenance and repairs, states began closing them.

Louisiana has closed 24 of its 34 rest areas since 2000, four of them last year. Maine, Vermont and Colorado have recently announced plans to shutter more rest areas because of cash constraints. Rhode Island, Tennessee, Arizona and others are thinking of doing likewise."

The Week In Review: Semi-Snarky Edition

There are numerous stories I've been pondering on this week and I am reluctant to just post a sentence or two so instead this is sort of a grab-bag of ideas and thoughts on items making news.

-- Here in East Tennessee, the EPA is now officially overseeing the cleanup of TVA's ash spill disaster in Roane County, using authority given the EPA via the Superfund Act. So, let me get this right: hazardous waste cleanup is needed, but all that coal ash isn't really hazardous waste in a legal sense. The dumping by TVA and the EPA on Roane County is blindingly awful and no end to it is in sight. TVA, and the federal and state officials of Tennessee, all earn a massive FAIL on this disaster response.

-- Also in Tennessee, it's about to get easier to take more guns into more places. Yeah, what a wonderful easing of a troublesome burden. Not enough folks toting guns wherever they go. Whew. (Used right, even a bowl of chili can protect your home and property.)

-- I posted a story this week about the astronaut Michael Massimino making use of the Twitter platform to publish short sentences while on the current NASA shuttle mission for repairs on the Hubble telescope. So far, it's just rather lame and pointless and for me further reduces any importance or value to our space program - a program which has been struggling to find funding and support by the nation and our government.

The shuttle has been mostly a mindless truck-for-hire for the military and the CIA, focused on minor tasks at huge operating costs, which allowed for endless delays in more useful projects in space and with greater scientific value. The Hubble has really been valuable for it's work, true. But the U.S. has really lost the initiative it once had in space exploration. This week, NOVA on PBS aired a special on the shuttle program and the Columbia disaster. I urge you to watch it rather than just read a few words typed onto Twitter.

-- Like a modern-day P.T. Barnum, Donald Trump has been able to make rather minor beauty pageants into a hot topic, thanks to the dim-witted comments of a Miss California winner. Also, I would imagine any career ideas she might have about being a model or actress will bring her into constant contact with gay people, the group of people she spoke so harshly about, so I doubt she'll receive much help from them to look and dress well. And really, this interest on a contest based on superficial looks -- useless.

Back in 1987 while working as a reporter for a local paper, I spent the day with that year's Miss America contest winner, Kellye Cash. I was more impressed she was a distant relative of Johnny Cash than with a Miss America title. But she was pretty and she certainly was a marked departure from the previous scandalized winner Vanessa Williams. But you know, Williams is the one working today as an actress and singer and in the spotlight. Kellye has been in regional theatre and has released a few CDs, but in terms of talent, Williams wins. I liked Kellye (but what is up with that extra E in her name?) and she seemed to be a nice person. But Trump knows, as did Barnum, that it is publicity and a whiff of danger that sells tickets and earns headlines.

As for what Miss California said and it being simply her usage of Freedom of Speech - well, yes, an American can speak their mind on any topic. But the speaker will still be held accountable for what they say.

-- In far more serious matters, the potential for a real U.S. disaster is growing thanks to ever-growing revelations about how torture was used to lead the nation into war in Iraq and how high up in the White House the orders originated, and an ever-growing reality that many in Congress knew what was happening. As I have written here many times before, this aspect of U.S. policy is doing and has done untold damage to the credibility of our country and beliefs. As of yet, we still lack the will and courage to face this horrible issue fully and punish those who made it happen.

Young Girl Finally Cleared In Texas Police Chaos

For reasons I cannot fathom - other than reasons originating from the most vile places of the human heart - it has taken two trials and three years for officials in Galveston, Texas to realize the near-lethal mistake made when un-uniformed police beat up a 12 year old girl in her front yard.

She had gone into her yard around 8 pm at her mother's request. A breaker had tripped and the breaker box was outside, so the daughter was sent out to reset it. Four police officers in an unmarked van had been told that reports had been made that three white female prostitutes were working in the area and selling drugs. Though the officers were several blocks away from where the incident was reported, they sighted young Dymond Milburn, who is black, in her yard and immediately swarmed out of the van and rushed at the child.

Terrified, she ran to hide under a bush outside her home, screaming for help from her father. Police beat the child severely, blacking both eyes, choking her and beating on her ears, using a flashlight and also allegedly threatening to shoot (or "arrest") her puppy if she did not come with them. Her father ran out to the scene, seeing grown men assaulting his daughter -- men not in anyway dressed as police or identifying themselves as such. (Prosecutors refuted those claims.) He fought these strangers on his lawn allowing his daughter to flee as best she could. Ultimately, Milburn was hospitalized for her injuries.

Three weeks later, police arrived at her school, where she was an honor student, and arrested her for assaulting a police officer.

On the first day of the trial against her in 2007, the judge declared a mistrial and reset the case.

Yesterday, after some eight hours of deliberation, the jury reported they were hopelessly deadlocked. The judge declared a mistrial as five jurors were adamant the child was not guilty of any crime. Prosecutors now say they will not attempt to try the case again.

Background on the case here and here, from the first trial, where an officer lied on the stand to implicate Mr. Milburn was a drug dealer.

A civil lawsuit filed against the officers in the case. (See also BoingBoing)

5 and 6 Year Olds Try to Elope to Africa

It is a dream that has been shared by lovers across the centuries – the chance to elope to exotic lands. But few would have been as bold and spontaneous as six-year-old Mika and his five-year-old sweetheart Anna-Bell who, after mulling over their options in secret, packed their suitcases on New Year's Eve and set off from the German city of Hanover to tie the knot under the heat of the African sun.

The children left their homes at dawn while their unwitting parents were apparently sleeping, and took along Mika's seven-year-old sister, Anna-Lena, as a witness to the wedding.

Awww ... you can read their adventures here.

In Which I Am Invaded

A rattling racket on the back porch jolted me away from the computer keyboard in the early hours of the morning.

"Dang cat," I thought. And yet when I turned and walked to the doorway to the back deck - nothing, no cat, no disrupted furniture, no sign of the wee feline.

Suddenly a wiry creature is flying at me and lands splayed across the screen door, claws clutch at the meshed pattern and I nearly faint from terror and adrenaline. Thankfully, I did not voice 'the girly scream'.

A squirrel hangs in mid-air clinging to the screen door, eyeing me with some amusement.

"Hey! What the heck -- HEY!"

Squirrel twitches it's bushy tail, and would surely have laughed had it the ability.

Instead it is all Fearlessness and Bravado. I pondered on opening the door to scare it away, then imagined the house invaded with a scampering hell-beast and wisely decided to do nothing. So we stared at each other for a few minutes. Finally he hurls himself into a roiling back-flip and begins a route outlining the dimensions of the deck by hopping from corner to corner via the posts on the deck railing.

A backyard rich in walnuts and other goodies is of no interest to this creature. I get the feeling he wants something specific. No idea what that might be --- some coffee maybe? A grilled cheese sandwich?

Muttering to myself, I go back to the computer and attempt to recollect my thoughts. About two minutes later, another house-jarring crash makes me jump out of my skin. Now he is hanging on the screen of the kitchen window, turning circles in a frenzy.

"WHAT?? What do you want from me?" I say, realizing instantly these are usually the last words of an imminent horror movie fatality.

He back and side flips over to the deck again.

For a moment, I ponder on offering him one of those pouches of catnip which sit in the cupboard. Could be interesting. Could make it far worse.

I start to ease the screen door open - maybe Timmy fell into the well and Lassie-squirrel here is trying hard to communicate the danger to me. (Timmy is at school and we do not have a well ... maybe a forest fire is approaching? Is Lassie-squirrel blinking a Morse code at me?)

Before I can do anything, the creature tornadoes across the deck and it's carpet of dead leaves, whirls up and back and sideways into the yard, does a bounce and is halfway up the walnut tree.

What the heck was that about?

Monkey Waiters

How can the US claim to be a superpower if we don't have monkey waiters??

"Twelve-year-old Yat-chan is the crowd-pleaser as he moves quickly between tables taking customer drink orders.

"The younger of the two, Fuku-chan is quick to give the diners a hot towel to help them clean their hands before they order their drinks, as is the custom in Japan.

Yat-chan and Fuku-chan, who are both certified by the local authorities to work in the tavern are well appreciated by customers, who tip them with soya beans."

Buried In A Pringles Can

Well, if you have the patent on the Pringles can, why not be buried in one? R.I.P Fredric J. Baur.

And some other news stories to which I can say "I did not know that!"

-- Your high school graduation speech was stolen (and your principal stole one too).

-- Riots between gangs of Emos and Punks are making the news in Mexico.

East TN Crop Circles Return, plus Other Strange Events

A report from WVLT-TV in Knoxville says that crop circles have returned to Monroe County, close to where they were made last May. (A commenter on the WVLT page says that deer are quite capable of making such intricate designs, and who knows, maybe they can pilot deer-ish sized craft across the cosmos, too.)

I guess anything is possible in a week where we have reports of a "Gay Bigfoot".

Or when a substitute teacher does a magic trick in class to make a toothpick disappear and is ousted for practicing "wizardry".

Or when the Cookie Monster ponders his addiction in a piece titled: "Is Me Really Monster?"

Living Fast and Senile At 30

There's such a serene and calm quality to the madness of this quote from "1984" that DeMarCaTionVille shared today:

"Nonsense. You are under the impression that hatred is more exhausting than love. Why should it be? And if it were, what difference would that make? Suppose that we choose to wear ourselves out faster. Suppose that we quicken the tempo of human life till men are senile at thirty. Still what difference would it make? Can you not understand that the death of the individual is not death?”

I was just thinking that I am slow to respond to hot-button, buzzflash responses to the massive investigation and judicial intervention into the FLDS child-bride story out of Texas. But it takes me some time to read and ponder on what the heck is happening and has been happening there. It seems I read so many blogger-commenter-pundits whose opinions arrive all neatly organized and outraged to such events.

I read these arguments that the simple folk of the FLDS church have every right to live and worship as they please without fearing investigation -- but who the heck gets to experience that level of living? Claiming a religious foundation for behavior isn't a Free Spot on Life's Bingo Card, though I know some see it that way (and what troubles the world today more than that view?). Likewise, unchecked interventions into family affairs is hardly advisable. But the more I read of that sect, it seems to me that they really mean family and affair in the worst kind of ways.

We do have freedoms of choices, but the actions we take based on our principles will always have consequences. And the events in Texas demand much thought and time to both gather information and digest its meaning. Sadly, I'm sure that before all the facts tumble out of this tale, the nanosecond news cycles and attention spans will be off on some other curious event.

Senile at 30 may be altered to 30 seconds and not years. With each passing day, I gather a wealth of confusion above all else.

Law Would Demand Mandatory DNA Testing and Other Fun Current Events

Rachel points out another proposed Tennessee law which has massive implications for all:

"Under a bill sponsored in the Senate by Tate (SB3717) and in the House by Hardaway (HB2964), a genetic test will be required to confirm paternity in order for the father to be listed on the birth certificate, regardless of the relationship between the parents. So, happily married and faithful husbands and wives, you’re suspect until proven otherwise by a state-ordered DNA test, regardless of whether you ever have a legal need to confirm suspect paternity. Single mothers? Well, it’s just assumed that you’re liars and out to cheat some man at such a rate that state-mandated DNA testing is warranted. [How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?]

I understand that this legislation is likely proposed in order to prevent men who are not truly the biological father from being liable for child support. However, I don’t understand why paternity tests couldn’t be required at the time of a paternity or child support dispute, rather than requiring the test for everyone. Why can’t my husband freely and voluntarily assert paternity, and leave mandatory DNA testing for the situation in which it is necessary to have confirmed, accurate information for legal proceedings? Birth certificates can already be amended via a court order if the wrong biological father was previously listed.
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I have some advice for state news-writers. Just prep the headline reading "Rep. Campfield's Proposed Bill Dies In Committee". Could just save some time.

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The Florida public school system which has decided it is acceptable to teach Science in Science classes, as long as they say the phrase "theory of evolution".

Yeah, theory (which does not mean a "wild guess") is a fairly important in Science. Here's the Top 10 Myths many believe about Evolution.

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Not sure if it's related, but a church in Florida is urging its married members to have sex every day for 30 days. Single folk, however, are to be excluded from the ... ah, the ... um ... drive.

Superheroes Are Reals!!

Maybe it was that bad reality series on the Sci-Fi Channel with Stan Lee. Maybe it's because we live in the 21st Century.

Whatever the reason, They are here.

They are more than 200 people from around the world who adopt secret identities and become Superheroes. However, they call themselves Reals.

"Soon the Jade Justice finds himself hip-deep in a supply closet, piling books into a red Radio Flyer wagon. He wheels it back to the lobby, entreating the children to select a text. But the kids seem more interested in peppering him with questions. "So are you a cowboy or something?" one boy asks.

Geist kneels down to reply with a camera-ready grin, "Maybe a super-secret, space-cowboy detective!"

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"Last October, an organization called Superheroes Anonymous issued an invitation to any and all real-life superheroes: Come to Times Square to meet other Reals face-to-face and discuss the future of the movement. The community roiled with discussion of the invitation—was it a trap by an as-yet-unknown real-life super villain? In the end, only a dozen Reals attended, but the gathering attracted the notice of the New York Times and the BBC, which gave the budding league of justice worldwide ink."

The article with the full story is here, complete with a Google map of worldwide locations of Reals, plus there is a photo gallery.

Cheesy spandex? Sure. But the one who calls himself Jade Justice just looks cheap horror movie scary.

The Maybe Baby News

Have you noticed the trend in the news to waffle and wiggle away, to dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge?

Take this guy. First he hid his arrest, then said he was sorry but not gay, then he was resigning and now, maybe not.

Or here - he was sort of in, he plans to announce his announcement, and another lackluster leader steps forth. Case in point: the ducking and dodging of campaign fundraising laws.

It's a music player, it's a web surfer, it's a phone, it's a web surfer, it's $599, it's $399. It's iNconsistent.

It's a slam dunk. It's a quagmire. It's a battle for the Future. It's a parade of surrender monkeys. It's a work in progress. It's winnable. It's a quagmire again.

It's microwave popcorn. It's a delivery system for lung disease.

It's a child's toy. It's a deadly toxin.

It's a non-nuclear transport. It's an accidental transport of nuclear weapons. Five of them. No, six.

It combats angina. It fights strokes. It treats MS and jet lag. It gives hours of stiffness. Heck, maybe it is a wonder drug.

Is it any wonder this song is stuck in my head?